Chapter Fourteen

"Sister! Sister, we must go back! Tia!"

Celestia did her best to keep Luna pinned at the bottom of the gully, praying that the vegetation would muffle the filly's voice. Her mind was awhirl. They couldn't stay here and wait for their mother to return. The witch Tham'ra had always been very particular about what to do if they were separated- find a resistance cell and reach Starswirl. The 'old codger', though Celestia knew he was less than half of her mother's age, was trustworthy.

That was where their mother would go to find them, before starting a search if need be. The two sisters were well-taught, and capable.

Now the young pegasus had only to convince herself of that fact.

They would wait until there was no sign of Discord, and then a good few hours more to be absolutely certain, before heading off.

Two years. Luna was seventeen, now, and a curious young mare. She heard Tia talk to Starswirl as she reached the wizard's corridor to meet for one of their lessons.

"The magic will take years to have a permanent effect," she heard him say, warningly.

"I'm patient. Mother said she would come up with something, but never quite finished. I don't know how long my necklace will last, either," said her older sister. Luna rolled her eyes- so it was about that. Mama promised to fix Tia's problem, and she'd be back soon enough. She could do anything, really, being a powerful and clever witch.

"It's also only cosmetic. You won't... you'll certainly not have progeny, by the time it's done," continued Starswirl.

"Mother will fix that, if she can. Just... please, Starswirl."

"As you wish. Join me tomorrow night- I'll be rested and ready to cast, then."

Fed up with waiting, Luna knocked on the door and pushed her way in. With her, she levitated a parcel.

"Tia! We've got mail, I think," she said. The pegasus opposite Starswirl's workbench frowned, curiously, before taking a seat. The wizard nearby rolled his eyes.

"From where? Has it been checked? You know the kind of 'party favors' that Discord slipped into the western shelter last year, correct?" he asked, rounding the desk and staring at the heavy bundle of brown paper and string.

Luna coughed. "I may... not have checked it, no. A zebra arrived with it, for 'Celestia and Luna, daughters of Tham'ra the witch'. From one of mama's friends, maybe. I think he's already gone on with the last trading party to leave the outpost."

"Fool!" Starswirl swepped up the book in his own magic and began casting spells. Slowly, gently, he eased off and gave a troubled glance to the two sisters. "You... have the room to yourselves for a bit. I'm going to get some tea. Just a few protective charms on it, otherwise clear, and... just open it."

"What's gotten him all worked up?" asked Celestia as the two sisters found themselves alone.

Luna shrugged. "Don't know, don't care- we've got a present!" With all of her usual enthusiasm, and none of the grace, she tore open the package.

"Watch it!" said Tia, batting away wrapping from her eyes with a wing.

Luna ignored her and gave an excited shout. "Sister! Our patience has been rewarded! Look!"

There, on a plain paper cover titled in familiar hoof-writing, was the title, 'For My Daughters'.

Suddenly, Tia was literally hanging off of her shoulders. "Open it! What is it?!"

"Get off! Stars, but you've eaten too much cake!" whined Luna, shrugging the older filly off. "Let me put this down, first."

It was an anthology. Stories, local lore about the Equestrian territories -including areas their family certainly hadn't visited- and short personal notes to the girls themselves.

They sat there together and read through the night, until reaching the last passage:

I can't claim that this is wise, my loves, but then my wisdom is a medley of guesswork and good fortune, it sometimes seems. That you are reading this is a sign that my return to you may be a longer time in coming than I had hoped.

As such, I can only arm you with the greatest resource I have available: lore.

In the forest of the most wild of magics, south of the Canterhorn, lies a glade. I have marked it for you, in such a way as only you shall be able to recognize it.

Below it, under the earth, you shall find a tree.

This last, greatest work of a spirit that I had the honor and pleasure of calling friend has properties which represent the very best of the pony people. Truth, mirth, largess, fealty, sympathy, and glamour. Used in harmony, these elements will allow even the most humble to prevail against such forces as Discord.

So rarely have I felt true hate, but for this creature which has separated us. But for fate, which had demanded you go this challenge alone. I do not yet believe my fight to be futile- I'm still seeking a way to reunite with you once more.

Do remember to brush your manes, and hold each other fondly.

All of my love,

your mother.

In darkness but for a candle, the two sisters held each other.

"Elements used in harmony," muttered Celestia.

"Mother believes we may face the mad king," said Luna. "I wonder if other mares have such expectant elders?"

"Luna!"

Celestia stared into the silvery mirror, at the new mark that now adorned her side. She wondered at it. Her mother had waited nearly a century to get her own talent emblem- she and Luna had ironically despaired of getting their own in half the time, at the ripe old ages of twenty-three and twenty respectively. Wresting the sun and moon from Discord in mid-battle had, she mused, been probably a bit too dramatic a way to go about things.

"We believe you ought to stop staring, less it should fall off, sister," came Luna's teasing voice.

Celestia rolled her eyes. "What is this 'we' business?" she asked.

"Are we not now royalty?" asked the younger sister. "We ought to act the part. It is important to take one's responsibilities seriously." She sounded not a bit ruffled.

The older sister sighed, then offered a fond smile. "It's to your credit that you believe so." She brushed her newly-confounding hair away, but it settled over one eye again. Stars, but she hoped she found a way to hold it back! "I spoke to Starswirl, recently."

Luna brightened up. "About our suspicions concerning mother's displacement?"

Celestia nodded. "Indeed. With the last delivery, and the tests we were able to do on its age, it is clear she was sent to the past. By whatever means, she must be attempting to 'catch up' as it were."

"Right," said Luna. "From what I, er, we have been able to understand, she must have had foreknowledge of our battle with Discord- to appear before then would have invited 'paradox', I believe it was?"

"But with Starswirl's newest spell, we might even be able to see her again," said Celestia was a growing grin. "She might only need confirmation that we have finished our task. That she may come home, now."

"Precisely," said Luna, who then looked back over her -new- wings, toward the tent's opening. "They will be starting soon. A small amount of posturing, and then we shall be able to go see her."

"I look forward to it," said Celestia, demonstrating her penchant for understatement.

Years passed, but neither gave up hope. Finally, Starswirl came up with a solution of sorts.

Light crackled and fell away from the pair in waves.

They glanced around, overjoyed at their apparent success, before the scene around them finally sunk in.

They were upon a battlefield. Luna whimpered, and stepped away from what was clearly a griffon. Or what had clearly been a griffon, a short while ago.

Their efforts against Discord had shown them some gruesome things, yes, but rarely an out-and-out battlefield.

"Where is she?" asked Celestia, glancing around with a bit more composure.

Luna swallowed back bile, then with no small surprise pointed and shouted, "There! Oh, stars, sister! Look!"

The two siblings galloped over a dip in the savaged landscape, noting that the sounds of fighting had turned distant. This must, Celestia figured, have been a running battle. That thought was soon pushed from her mind as she and Luna skidded to a stop before their mother. Though their mother had never looked quite like this.

Aside from the slightly larger proportions, aside from the horn, the mare was covered in viscera. Some of it obviously her own.

"Lulu! Magic!" shouted the elder sister, not having had more than half her sister's time to practice her own talents. Luna, on the other hoof, had been an avid student of Clover the Clever for most of her life.

The blue alicorn frantically set to work casting diagnostic charms on their mother, while Celestia began banishing the battle filth away. The wounds on her body, once cleaned, looked only slightly less terrible. Worse was the dazed look in her eyes, and the thin line of blood dripping from the gash just under her horn. Clearly, Tham'ra had been knocked senseless.

"Need to... shielding cantrip. Guise of a... yeah." Their mother blinked at the distance. "Silly rabbit, swords are for kids."

"Very good, mama," said Celestia. "Look at me, come now- what has happened? What brought you here and... where do you go next? Mother?"

"None. Nothing," muttered the oldest alicorn of the three. "Bloody... Tartarus. Tirek. Chain him to a dog. Banished, will come from the east, oh Lulu. Lulu. Lovely girl, don't be angry. He was a fool, the night take him. It will be okay, I promise. Tia, she'll be so much like Clover. Her stars will aid Lulu's escape." A whimper, so unlike what the two young mares had never heard her make. "I think we were supposed to... supposed to see them all again. See you again."

"Some good news would be much appreciated, Lulu!" Celestia was getting very worried at her mother's rambling.

"I can heal the head wound- Clover showed me some simple aid," said Luna. "Just... a mere minute, sister!"

"I wonder if I'll be happy," said Tham'ra. "If I... live twice, too. My girls, my littlest, my..." Her eyes closed, and she slumped.

"That was supposed to happen," said Luna quickly. "The healing must take effect."

"We can't stay," said Celestia frantically. They had acted so hastily upon receiving the spell. They hadn't considered their options- by any measure, they had none. Even empowered by two alicorns, the magic could only stretch so far.

"We could take her with us!" said Luna, still working as fast as she could on the mare's wounds.

"No," said Celestia. "What comes back is only what was sent back. Lulu, this spell is one use only."

It was a credit to her little sister's concentration that Luna didn't halt in her casting, even as her expression drew back in a grimace. "There will be other options- there must be!"

The atmosphere filled with a familiar hum, and both siblings froze in place.

"It is too soon," whispered Luna. "Please, mother, wake up- tell us anything at all, please!"

But then they were gone.

"We were so close!" shouted Luna. "Fix the spell! Repair the stupid thing!"

Starswirl, face turned lined and elderly, glared. "It's not broken, you foal! How far do you think any one pony can bend time? It can change nothing -as I told you!- and all things must in their nature come to a full circle!"

He alone among many didn't flinch when the younger sister's magic flared like a corona of ultraviolet light, hair blowing in hurricane winds.

"Magic of a different nature, then," said Celestia, who was holding herself slightly more together.

"With all due respect," said the bearded stallion, "my other studies are already suffering. I gave Tham'ra everything she needed to return under her own power as it is. You've only confirmed that she is in our past, and is capable enough of doing so. She needs only move forward- a task infinitely easier than doing the opposite! As you see, I'm doing the same thing myself, if only one second at a time!"

The discussion did not improve much after that.

"She'll return when she can, Lulu," said Celestia later on that evening. Her eyes were shut against exhaustion and stress. "I have faith in her."

"Something could have gone wrong," said her relentlessly pacing sister. "You saw! Anypony could have come along and... and slit her throat!"

"She won't be brought low so easily," said Celestia. "Plainly, she managed to ascend herself, did she not? Our bodies are substantially more damage-resistant than they were."

Instead of answering, Luna turned to the latest batch of reports left by the palace academics. Not a night went by without one of them taking the Everfree road, bringing reports of small signs left behind by 'Faust'. Clearly, their mother had been busy. The sisters were limited in their time to look, governing from the small city that was their triumph over the wilds.

Up until there weren't any reports of her at all. One day -and accounts were too sketchy, after centuries of moldering, to tell the exact day- Tham'ra simply wasn't there anymore. Just accounts of a strange being from out of the east, who had savagely taken on early Equestria and seemingly paved the way for grateful neighbors to greet the land's liberators from Discord's reign.

Or as Celestia had heard from Starswirl, 'More of the mare's usual meddling'. Though he had said it with a certain amount of fondness.

'With any luck,' thought Celestia, 'she'll have made her way back before Lulu and I are old and gray.'

In the centuries to come, and as small 'care packages' continued to appear, the sisters had to wonder at just how prescient the witch had been, and how.

Not entirely prescient, though, since every gift was prefaced with 'if I have not yet returned to you'.

After returning from their brief stint in the past, the sisters had long mulled over their mother's appearance. Celestia wondered if the 'alicornification' had been a new thing, or if their mother had always been more than she had appeared. Guiltily, the thought that the witch had always been some fantastical creature in hiding appealed to the eldest sister's sense of romance.

Before his death, apprised of their mothers' words babbled through a veil of pain and exhaustion upon an ancient battlefield, Starswirl had declared it all to be exactly that: babble.

Celestia had always been struck by a few words in particular: of living twice, of 'her' looking like Clover. She and Luna would often remark that so-and-so greatly resembled mares and stallions they had known in the past. It may have been coincidence, of course.

But then the princesses had broken the armies of Tartarus, and turned the underground caverns into a prison for the worst of monsters. Luna had set a dog to guard it, before the younger royal realized what she was doing.

Tirek had come out of the east, and eventually been chained behind the hound.

Luna, corrupted by Sombra in a hideous last-ditch attempt at revenge on the old sorcerer's part. She had, as their mother had claimed, turned so very angry...

Then, over nine hundred years after her sister's... departure, Celestia met a young filly. One who looked so much like Clover that to hear young Twilight Sparkle not chattering in ancient unicornian had been a shock.

Had their mother been a prophetess? Just plain lucky and clever? The protections hiding their old home were too strong for Celestia to research on her own in the greatest remaining collection from the ancient world's libraries.

The Element Bearers were six faces from the past. Luna had been so confused after being purged from the Nightmare, believing herself for a moment to be back in their childhood.

"Has she... has she yet returned, sister?" asked Luna. Around them, a festival in honor of the sun's return was still running at full steam.

Celestia ducked down and nuzzled the diminished alicorn. "Not yet. But given how many old faces we can see here today, I wouldn't be surprised."

Luna nodded, and parted her mane with a splash of magic. From nestled in her long, blue hairs floated a book.

"Is that..." Celestia swallowed.

"Yes," said Luna. "Seemingly written for me, personally. Delivered before our final battle. Even in my madness I... I didn't dispose of it. Have there been others, since?"

The elder sister thought back to the half dozen gifts and manuscripts carefully delivered over the past thousand years. "Yes. A few written 'for when my youngest eventually is brought back by familiar faces'."

"Confound her," said Luna, but fondly. "She knew. Or... or something. I'm not sure how to feel about this."

"We'll ask when she returns," said Celestia.

"You still believe she will?" asked Luna, eyes shining with hope.

"She can do anything," said Celestia. Luna didn't argue with her.

Eight years after the return of Princess Luna, six mares found themselves sitting solemnly in Twilight's old tower. The last of the six, an unusually somber Pinkie Pie, kept glancing back to the door.

"What were you up to, Pinkie?" asked Applejack. She, along with everypony else, had been struck by the way the two oldest princesses had stumbled, almost drunkenly, away from the ritual room.

Twilight tried not to appear to focus too tightly on the pink mare, but gave it up when the rest of the girls didn't even bother with subtlety.

"I... I tried to go see what was wrong, or invite them to a 'we found one of our human buddies' party, but..." Pinkie bit her lip and shook her head, cutting herself off.

"Pinkie?" tried Twilight.

"I could hear crying," said the earth pony. "I've never heard the princesses cry. I heard it all up the hallway, and the guards and servant ponies looked like they were going to cry too."

"Well. What do we know for certain?" asked Rarity, as taken aback as the rest of them.

"Well," said Twilight. "Just before the rift closed for good, Tham'ra..." Twilight winced, then sounded it out again with the harder English syllables, "Ta-ma-ra somehow did magic. Like one of my less likely hypotheses, she was injured by the high-magic environment. Canterlot is famous for it- in somewhere neutral like the Bad Lands, she might have been okay if she weren't so battered by her arrival. Then she did magic again -somehow-" she grumbled, "and disappeared."

"No, get to the important bit," said Rainbow. "That was her as a pony. A pegasus. How the feather-plucking heck did that happen?"

"I haven't the faintest," admitted Twilight. "But one thing was for sure. She was years in the past. Maybe... centuries." The circle of mares went quiet. "Girls, she... she might have already died a long time ago, maybe even of old age. The princesses... I think they knew her." She swallowed. "I don't know if I want to ask about it, though. Not when it had that sort of reaction from them."

"The poor girl didn't have a cutie mark," said Rarity.

"Were those seaponies?" mumbled Fluttershy.

"How was she doing magic?" asked Rainbow. "I mean, again?"

"I don't know," said Twilight. She glanced back at the door, eyes unfocused as if trying to see the distant suites of the royal pony sisters. "I just don't know."